Syndicate: Moscow Media Art Lab: Share Media Art Collections

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[good news! greetings, inke]


Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 18:56:33 +0300
From: "MediaArtLab, Moscow " <procontra@danet.ru>
Subject: Share Media Art Collections

Dear friends,

WE're happy to let you know that Moscow MediaArtLab moved to a new own 
(finally!!!)space. We are situated now in a not very big but pretty room at the 
Russian Institute for Cultural Research based in the former church building on 
Moscow-River quay near to Kremlin.

Since the beginning of the year we've launched a project of professional public 
archive of media art. Please find bellow information about it and our offer 
concerning collaboration for media art organisations and individuals.


I  n  v  i  t  a t  i  o  n    t  o    p  a  r  t  n  e  r  s  h  i  p
f o r   M E D I A  A R T  c e n t r e s  &  a r c h i v e s  &  c o l l e c t i 
o n s  &  f e s t i v a l s

EXCHANGE PROJECT
Share Media Art Collections
Moscow MediaArtLab's initiative


Dear Colleagues,

Moscow MediaArtLab is pleased to offer you collaboration in the field of 
non-for-profit distribution and exchange with specially selected programs of 
media art from your collections. The idea is derived from obvious necessity to 
pedal the process of acquaintance of local both professional and 
non-professional audiences with foreign media art scenes, their histories and 
present development.  The general purposes  of this initiative are:

- making wider context of distribution of media art at national and 
international levels;
- acceleration of exchange with information and materials, and thus, 
collaboration between media art practitioners from different countries;
- providing artists and researches with access to diverse materials and 
information on new media art and culture;
- enrichment of local media art collections. 

Collaboratively organized educational and presentational exchange programs might 
play crucial role in media art scenes and audience development, especially in 
Eastern Europe.  

MediaArtLab is going to develop Exchange Project on the basis of the Mediatheque 
of Infocenter for Media Culture, which was launched in the beginning of this 
year. Please find below description of Mediatheque project. Also we enclosed a 
brief information about MediaArtLab's activity.

We'll be very thankful for your assistance in dissemination of this information 
among individuals and organisations that might be interested in participation in 
this project.

Contributions from authors are welcome as well!!! 

Hope for your interest and cooperation. 

Alexey Isaev, Director of MAL <newart@aha.ru>
Olga Shishko, Curator of MAL <shishko@transts.ru>
Tatiana Gorucheva, International Coordinator of MAL <tangor@redline.ru>


E-mail: procontra@danet.ru

Mediatheque of Infocenter for Media Culture

MEDIATHEQUE will become the first systematic professional public archive of 
media art in Russia. It will be a part of information center, whose task is to 
collect, systemize, and to provide professional and non-professional audiences 
with open access to diverse information on contemporary media culture. The 
latter one includes not only media art, but also another creative, research and 
experimental forms of activity aimed at exploring and solving a wide range of 
problems related to development of new information-communication technologies, 
their role in contemporary culture as well as results of their impact on 
cultural processes. The most important reason of initiation of this project is 
the lack of information which would let people study and follow the process of 
development of world and local media cultures what makes problematic elaboration 
of competent and appropriate methods for pushing forward productive 
inter-relations between cultural and technological spheres in Russia. Thus, 
infocenter should become, first of all, a platform for educational and research 
projects in this field.

Initially this project has been launched in order to preserve films and videos 
by Russian artists from destruction and loss as well as to collect documentation 
of such projects as installations, performances, actions, whose production is 
based on the use of media. Besides that MAL is about to launch special program 
aimed at exploring the most appropriate methods of storing Internet based art 
projects. At the same time regarding constantly growing interest to media art in 
Russia and to MediaArtLab's collection in particular among professional artists, 
curators, and researches, as well as audiences, the necessity to create public 
archive on the professional platform is obvious. Other important goal is to 
stimulate distribution of Russian media art all over Russia and abroad as well 
as to further acquaintance of Russian audience with foreign media art through 
organizing exchange, educational, festival programs in Moscow and Russian 
regions. Regional museums, art and education centers are very interested in 
receiving specially prepared by experts educational programs which would help to 
acquaint local audiences with history and present development of media art in 
Russia and abroad. 


a.History

During 3 years of work MAL has already collected more than 150 hours of video 
art works by Russian and international artists on VHS tapes, its archive also 
includes a number of CD-ROMs. Basically for the moment this collection consists 
of collections of Moscow studios that doesn't exist any more, personal 
selections of works by Russian artists, and different screening programs of 
Russian and international video art that were specially organized and shown 
within the frame of other projects of MediaArtLab. 


b.Structure

Mediatheque will consist of:
?audio-visual archive of media art works in professional electronic and digital 
formats;
?cart index and catalogue of artists and works;
?computer database, full information bank with the search system, which will be 
accessible on-line and off-line;
?library, which will include books on history and theory of media, media art, 
cyberculture, collections of essays, catalogues, periodicals, etc.;
?show room equipped with monitors, video players, video projector, screen, 
computers with the Internet access .


c.Functions 

Mediatheque will function as an open public archive which will provide people 
with access to all stored materials and information; equipment for their 
examination; navigation tools: catalogue, cart index, database; consulting 
assistance. Infocenters's bank of information and art works  also will be used 
in order to select and prepare special programs according to requests of 
interested Russian and foreign organisations, as well as for MediaArtLab's own 
and collaborative projects (seminars and workshops, screenings, festivals, 
conferences). On the basis of collected materials MediaArtLab is going to 
publish an anthology of Russian media art which will consist of three volumes. 
The first one will be dedicated to experimental films and video art, the second 
one - to multi media art, and the third one - to Internet art.


d.Users

Artists, art historians and theorists, other scientists, curators and art 
managers, critics and journalists, students, art and cultural organisations, 
interested non-professional audience.


e.Partners

?Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Moscow - administrative expenses; 
?Filmmakers Union of Russia - co-production of educational TV program "From 
Kino-Avantgarde to Video Art" for the non-for-profit state channel "Culture";
?Cinema Museum, Moscow - public presentation of screening programs of video art 
works from the Mediatheque's collection;
?Russian State Library for Foreign Literature - non-for-profit distribution and 
information support;
?German Cultural Centre "Goethe Institute" - support to collecting materials, 
information and programs exchange.

         
f.Financial Support

?Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation
?"Open Society Institute", Soros Foundation.



Information about MediaArtLab

MediaArtLab, Information and Research Center for New Media Art and Culture, is 
an independent non-profit organisation. Its activity aims to provide support to 
development of new media initiatives in arts and broader cultural sphere in 
Russia by means of distribution of information and accumulation professional 
discussions and collaboration, organising events and building up a resource 
platform. MAL has been founded in 1998 by an initiative group of three people: 
Alexey Isaev (present director), Olga Shishko (present curator), Tatiana 
Gorucheva (present international coordinator). Primarily MAL had status of a 
pecial program of the former Soros Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow. Since 
the spring 2000 MAL has existed as an independent organisation.  At the moment 
MAL develops its programs and projects in the next directions: 

- promotion, distribution, and support for new media art in Russia;
- organising of inter-disciplinary collaborative projects in the field of new 
media culture;
- providing open public access to professionally collected and systemysed 
information on new media art and culture;
- education in the field of new media art.

Annual projects of MediaArtLab:
- Da-Da-Net (1998, 1999)  Russian on-line festival of Internet art resources, 
including net.art and web specific art " <http://www.da-da-net.ru>; TrashArt 
(1999)  International Internet art festival <http://www.da-da-net.ru/TrashArt> 
(within the frame of Da-Da-Net' 1999);
- Pro&Contra (2000) International interdisciplinary symposium dedicated to the 
advanced practices and experiments in the field of new media culture 
<http://www.procontra.danet.ru> (Pro&Contra 2 is planed to be held in autumn 
2001); 
- Media Forum (2000), special program of Moscow International Film Festival. The 
first one was organised  as a series of international screening programs of 
video art prepared by curators from Centre de George Pompidou (Paris), ZKM 
(Karlsruhe), Montevideo (Amsterdam), as well as by independent curators from 
Ukraine, Canada, Australia, USA, Moscow. Programs were shown during all 5 days 
of the festival, two programs each day. Media Forum 2001 is going to be 
organised as a satellite media art festival which will present besides video art 
also multi media and Internet art works. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MediaArtLab
Russian Institute for Cultural Research
20, Bersenevskaya Nab.,
109072 Moscow
Russia
Tel.: 007 095 959 17 05
Tel./Fax: 007 095 950 09 92
E-mail: procontra@danet.ru
URL: http://www.danet.ru


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